The Summer House (22 page)

Josh Miller looked shorter in person than he did on the news. Danny was an expert on how to judge a man’s height by the way he sat in a chair: so much allowed for the torso, calculated by how far the legs stuck out at the knees before the feet reached the floor. It was, he sensed, a foolish, weird game. But it helped pass the time some days and didn’t hurt anyone.

From his position in the living room, Danny could see the other presidential candidate in profile, enough to determine that Josh Miller was under six feet—five nine or ten maybe, not as grand in stature as his opponent, Dad. Danny tried to remember a study he had read in college about presidential candidates and what the outcomes of elections were in relation to the height of each candidate. But he could not recall the results; it had seemed unimportant at the time, like so many things that had since found some meaning if only to give his mind something to do.

He wished he could read lips. He wished his mother hadn’t closed the French doors. All he could tell was that they were both animated. Mom was smiling. Miller was smiling. But neither was revealing why Josh was here.

Danny wondered what this would do to rogerdodger’s polls if anyone knew. And exactly how prejudiced Gramps had been. His mother had once said she hadn’t seen Josh Miller in decades. So what were they doing now? Sharing old stories of shooting at squirrels (the way he and LeeAnn and Reggie had done) or clamming (ditto) or stealing the bike ferry and going past Menemsha for a picnic (double ditto)?

And, if so, why were they talking about such stuff when the future of a nation was at stake?

He realized that this was perhaps the first time he had thought of his mother—his parents—as being young,
young enough to be utterly stupid. It was not easy to imagine, not of his mother. Nor of this five foot nine or ten, slightly unpolished guy who now sat on their porch, though God only knew why.

Maybe Danny could learn something if he wheeled out front where the agents were hanging out in the driveway. By the sounds of the laughter coming from there, Moe and Curly seemed to know the others, belonging, as they did, to the mutually exclusive club of professional guardians. He wondered if they were talking—laughing—about them, if they were comparing the Bartons and the Millers, and who came up as being the bigger pains in the ass to guard.

He was wondering these things when the telephone rang.

Chapter 20

She did not want him to go; she wanted to sit here and listen to the sound of his voice, the cadence of his words—poet’s words, ebbing and flowing with the rhythm of the waves, riding the tide of the wind.

But for the sake of her sanity, she wished he would go.

“The second time I went to Israel, it was different,” Josh said.

She wanted to block her ears. She wanted to hear no more. The second time he went to Israel. Yes, she remembered that, too. She had not—not now, not ever—wanted to remember that time, when he’d finally returned, when it had been—should have been—too late.

“I think it was only then that I realized we really would not be together,” he was saying, then added, “God, it had been five years since I’d seen you. Wouldn’t you think I’d have figured it out before then?”

Liz lowered her gaze to the gray-painted porch floor, as the painful memories flooded back, memories of the summer when everyone had left her—first Daniel, then BeBe, then Josh. She once again felt the huge, empty hollow of loneliness, and the way Michael had been there to
help slowly fill it. Five years later, when Josh returned to the island, she was married to Michael, had been married a year, because Michael hadn’t left her and because Father had wanted it.

“It had been five years since I’d seen you,” Josh continued now, “but in my heart, you were always there.”

He had been in hers, too. Which was why it had been so easy to love him again. “That entire five years,” Liz said quietly, “I never heard from you. You never wrote.”

He steadied the swing. “That’s not true, Liz. I wrote all the time. It was you who did not write back.”

She nodded. She had always suspected—hoped—that Father was destroying Josh’s letters, because that was less hurtful than thinking he had never written. “Father,” she said. “He must have found your letters.”

Josh also nodded, as if he, too, had known, as if he, too, had accepted their fate. “So you never got my address, and you did not know where to write. And by the time I came back you and Michael were married.”

“Was that why you returned to Israel?”

“Returned? I ran away, Liz. It was better than staying here, wanting the one thing I could not have. I tried to punish myself by rejoining the military. But I was given a routine patrol assignment on the Jordan River. It was mundane,” he continued, “boring. Most of Israel’s problems were with Lebanon then, so the river was safe. But it was incredibly quiet and brutally hot. In fact, the only excitement was the heat. At night the sky was so big and so black it scared me sometimes.”

She tried to picture this passionate man who was active and curious and … loving … alone on the banks of the hot desert river. She thought of the stars in the wide dark sky, and thought of Anastasia, adrift and alone. Adrift and alone—the way she too, had felt when he’d left for good. Blinking back the images, she asked, “Why did you stay there?”

“Penance, I guess. For loving you.”

They were silent a moment. Liz wished it was nighttime, so the sky above them would be big and black now so she would feel what Josh had gone through, and maybe have a better sense that he had loved her, once, long ago.

“On weekends, most of the soldiers went home,” he said. “It was the only time they had anything decent to eat.”

“And you?” Liz asked. “What did you do?”

“Sometimes I stayed. Our barracks were concrete huts, designed to keep out the heat. At night I went down to the banks of the river. I sat there alone. I looked up at the sky.” He paused. “And then,” he said quietly, “I met Rachael.”

Rachael, of course, was the small, sweet-smiling woman whose picture Liz had seen hundreds of times when Josh was a senator. And each time she’d told herself it didn’t matter that Rachael was his wife and she wasn’t.

Josh continued. “Rachael lived in a kibbutz. They’re the most honored, you know. God’s chosen ones are born in a kibbutz.”

“A commune,” Liz replied, then wished her word had not sounded so negative.

Josh smiled. “Sort of. A holy one, though.”

She shifted her position on the swing. “So you fell in love with Rachael and then you were married.”

“It wasn’t that simple. When I finished in the military, I came back to the States. Israel is my homeland, but America is my home. Anyway, by that time, Vietnam was over, but the only thing on my résumé was being a soldier. Rachael had an uncle here who lived not far from my parents in Brooklyn Heights. He was a dean at Columbia. I went there, then on to law school. The state senate came next. It wasn’t until the late eighties—just
before I was elected to the U.S. Senate—that I saw her again.”

He did not elaborate on when they were married, or how joyful it had been for him when his children—the two girls, now eight and ten—were born. For that Liz was grateful.

“It must have been difficult,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “losing your wife. And your children are so young …”

“It’s probably why I’ve thrown myself into this campaign.”

In another place, in another time, they might have been on the same side. They might have been fighting for the White House together, if things had been different, if life had not hurt them.

His hand returned to hers. His warmth covered her skin. “There are so many things I would like to tell you, Liz,” he said. “So many things I’d like to ask.”

She nodded and turned her face toward the dunes, off toward the sea. For a few moments, they did not speak, the swing creaking slowly, marking the passage of time, a reminder—as if Liz needed one—that their worlds, and their lives, were not, had never been, one.

“Mom?”

Both of them jumped. Liz turned her head toward the door and Josh pulled his hand from hers. Danny sat in his wheelchair at the open door, an odd, quizzical look in his eyes as he looked from one of them to the other. “Dad’s on the phone,” he said.

Liz rose too quickly from the old porch swing, as if Danny had caught her in a private moment, the way she had caught him in his.

“We’re leaving here for south Florida tonight. If you meet us there, you can see BeBe,” Michael said.

Liz tried to listen, but it was hard when she could see from where she stood in the living room that Danny had stayed on the porch, and was deep in conversation with Josh.

“Liz?”

Should she tell him that Josh was here? He was bound to find out and then it would seem strange that she hadn’t mentioned it. She wished she could hear what Danny was saying; she moved closer to the glass and squinted, as if that would help. “I just saw BeBe at Father’s funeral,” she said.

Michael sighed loudly and tightly. “Have you talked to her since?”

Liz pulled back the curtain. Danny’s wheelchair faced the swing. He seemed to be studying Josh. What was he looking for? She blinked, knowing it must be her imagination. “BeBe and I don’t always talk regularly. You know that.”

The sigh again. “Liz, the kids want you here. I want you here. I feel so … off balance without you around.”

Off balance?
Liz wondered if that was what Josh had felt when his wife had died.

“Danny said Josh Miller is there.”

Michael’s statement, combined with the laughter she now heard from the porch, from her lover and from her son, weakened her knees, her spine, her heart. Of course Danny would have told him, because Danny would have no idea there was anything to hide.

“What are you doing?” Michael continued, “fraternizing with the enemy?”

Liz leaned against the windowsill and toyed with the phone cord. “He came to pay a condolence call. In fact, he was just leaving.”

What followed was silence. No sighs, simply silence.

“Maybe we could talk about this later?” Liz asked. “About me leaving the Vineyard?” From the window she
saw Josh stand up.
No
, her heart cried out.
Please don’t leave yet
. “Michael?”

“What,” came his flat response.

“I said, can we talk about this later?” She wondered if it was her imagination, or if his tone had changed when he’d mentioned Josh. They’d never talked about Josh as a person, only as a competing commodity, like Tide versus Wisk, Scotties versus Kleenex. She had tried not to think about whether he knew more about that summer on the Vineyard, if Evelyn, in all these years, had ever told him what she had seen. She tried not to wonder if he knew … everything.

“I have a speech in five minutes,” he said. “Another in two hours. When exactly is ‘later’?”

Outside the window, Josh was shaking Danny’s hand.

“Your father would want you here, Liz,” Michael said, his tone softening a little.

“I know,” she replied, feeling as if the air was being squeezed from her—the air and her soul and her
self
. “Father wanted a lot of things from me, Michael. And I always came through on everything. But he’s not here anymore. And now I’ll just have to trust my own instincts, and accept that I have my own feelings that I sometimes need to address.”

After Liz got off the phone, she returned to the porch. Josh was joking with Danny, trying to convince him to change party allegiances.

“Sorry,” Danny was saying, “I’m afraid my dad needs all the sympathy votes I can drum up.”

Liz smiled. “You’ll have to excuse Danny. His sense of humor is a bit twisted sometimes.”

“Except with the media,” Danny pointed out. “I’m always on my best behavior with the media.”

“You learned from a pro,” Josh said with a wink toward Liz.

“My mother?” Danny asked.

“Nope. Your grandfather. He was one of the last great political strategists. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it.”

Then Josh smiled, and Liz smiled, and Danny smiled. And Liz knew Josh needed to leave now.

She folded her arms and thanked him for coming and left it to the Secret Service to escort him out of the house. She tried not to think about the fact that it might be another twenty years before they were alone together again, when they were old and wrinkled and no longer cared about what might have been.